The US mil­i­tary has always been way ahead of the game with inte­grat­ing advanced vehi­cle tech­nolo­gies that end up years lat­er in pas­sen­ger vehi­cles. Lock­heed Mar­tin has been part of this for years, and more recent­ly, has tak­en on autonomous vehi­cles. The com­pa­ny was award­ed a Dept. of Defense con­tract in its Robot­ics Tech­nol­o­gy Con­sor­tium. The $11 mil­lion con­tract is focused on the devel­op­ment, inte­gra­tion, and test­ing of the (AMAS).

It’s a mul­ti­plat­form kit that inte­grates low-cost sen­sors and con­trol sys­tems onto US Army and Marine Corps tac­ti­cal vehi­cles to assist dri­vers or enable autonomous oper­a­tion in con­voys. AMAS does not inter­fere with dri­vers who choose to oper­ate their vehi­cle man­u­al­ly. It adds a sens­ing and con­trol func­tion that alerts users so they can rapid­ly react to safe­ty threats.

“Dri­ving tac­ti­cal vehi­cles in a com­bat zone can be dan­ger­ous, but AMAS will help by giv­ing dri­vers an auto­mat­ed option to alert, stop and adjust, or take full con­trol under user super­vi­sion,” said Scott Greene, vice pres­i­dent of ground vehi­cles in Lock­heed Martin’s Mis­siles and Fire Con­trol busi­ness. “We pio­neered this tech­nol­o­gy and have logged more than 16,000 miles with it on sev­er­al plat­forms. AMAS is a con­crete step in using autonomous sys­tems to let sol­diers be sol­diers instead of being dri­vers.”

Lock­heed Mar­tin has been active in this advanced vehi­cle tech­nol­o­gy pro­gram for sev­er­al years now. Its award-win­ning Con­voy Active Safe­ty Tech­nol­o­gy (CAST) pro­gram has applied advanced leader/follower auton­o­my to mul­ti­ple tac­ti­cal vehi­cle types that serve in con­voys. The US Army Tank-Auto­mo­tive Research, Devel­op­ment and Engi­neer­ing Cen­ter test­ed the CAST vehi­cles under a vari­ety of com­bat con­di­tions and demon­strat­ed that the sys­tem will save lives by improv­ing both safe­ty and secu­ri­ty.